The Han Solo Adventures (25 page)

“Take your boss’s body with you,” he ordered the two. They looked at one another. The creature’s finger poised near the controls of their collars. They scrambled to obey, hoisting the late Zlarb between them.

Chewbacca led the way as the ex-slaves, preceded by their new servants, bore their dead from the cargo hold. “Don’t forget to get rid of the other casualties,” Han called after his friend. “And collar up that other slaver for them. Then bring me a reader!”

Exhausted, he resolutely set to the task of cleaning up his injuries with another irrigation bulb, thinking ominous thoughts about how little money he and Chewbacca had left and wondering if their rotten luck would ever break. Then it occurred to him that Zlarb would undoubtedly have killed him, and Chewbacca as well, if Blue Max and Bollux hadn’t given the situation a twist. As it was, he and the Wookiee were alive and free and, with a little cleaning up, would have their starship in something like running order again very shortly. By the time Chewbacca returned, Han was applying synth-flesh to his wounds and whistling to himself.

The Wookiee was carrying a portable readout. Han shoved the medipack aside and fit the data plaque into the reader. His copilot leaned over his shoulder and together they puzzled over what they saw.

“Date-time coordinates, planetary index numbers,” Han muttered. “Ships’ registry codes and rental agents’ IDs. Most of them for a planet called Ammuud.” Chewbacca rumbled his own mystification.

Han again cursed Zlarb. Removing the plaque, he inserted the message tape into the readout’s other aperture. On the screen appeared the face of a young, black-haired man. The tight closeup told Han nothing about the man’s surroundings, whereabouts, or even the clothing he wore.

The face in the portable readout began speaking. “The measures you suggested are being taken against the Mor Glayyd on Ammuud. When delivery of your current consignment is made, payment will take place on Bonadan. Be at table 131, main passenger lounge, Bonadan Spaceport Southeast II at these coordinates.” Standard date-time coordinates appeared on the screen for a moment, then it cleared.

Han tossed the reader into the air with a burst of laughter. “If we pour it on, we can still get there in time. Let’s get the canopy patched; we can tidy up and see to Bollux and Max while we’re in jump.”

He kissed the reader and the Wookiee brayed, muzzle wrinkling, tongue curling, fangs showing. It was time to see about payments due.

Han Solo was obliged to raise his voice to deliver the punch line. A gargantuan ore barge was settling in with such a booming of brute engines that, even though it was grounding halfway across the vast spaceport, it set up tiny wavelets in drinks in the passenger terminal’s main lounge.

The main lounge of Bonadan Spaceport Southeast II was colossal and, besides the unceasing rumble of arriving and departing ships, was filled with the conversation of thousands of human and nonhuman customers that overtaxed its sound-muting system. The lounge’s transparent dome revealed a sky teeming with ships of every description, their comings and goings orchestrated by the most advanced control system available. Planetary and solar system shuttles, passenger liners, the enormous barges carrying food and raw materials, Authority Security Police fleet ships, and bulk freighters bearing away Bonadan’s manufactured goods—all combined to make this one of the busiest ports in the Corporate Sector.

Although it encompassed tens of thousands of star systems, the Corporate Sector Authority was no more than an isolated cluster among the uncountable suns known to humankind. But there wasn’t one native, intelligent life form to be found in this entire part of space; a number of theories existed to explain why. The Authority had been chartered to exploit the incalculable wealth here. There were those who used words like “despoil” and “pillage” for what the Authority did. It maintained absolute control over its provinces and employees, and guarded its prerogatives jealously.

Leaning closer to Chewbacca, Han chuckled. “So the prospector says—get this, Chewie—the prospector says, “Well, how do you think my pack-beast got knock-kneed?”

He had timed the delivery just right. Chewbacca had raised a two-liter mug of Ebla beer to his lips and a spasm of laughter caught him right in the middle of a long draught. He choked, snorted, and woofed mightily into his mug. White beer-spume exploded outward. Though they registered displeasure, patrons at nearby tables, inspecting the Wookiee and noting his size and the fierce, fanged visage, refrained from complaining. Han chortled, as he scratched a shoulder made itchy by the somatigenerative effects of the synth-flesh.

Chewbacca uttered a guttural accusation. The pilot raised his eyebrows. “Of course I timed the punch line that way. Bollux told that joke to me while I was eating and it did the same thing to me.” Chewbacca thought about the joke again and laughed abruptly, something halfway between a grunt and a bark.

Throughout his story and most of the long Bonadan morning Han had kept an eye on table 131. It was still vacant and the little red light over its robo-bartender indicated that it was still reserved. The closest overhead chrono showed that the time for Zlarb’s rendezvous with his employer was long past.

The lounge was nearly filled, which tended to be true of this place at any hour of the day or night, what with the number of passengers and crew members passing through the port in addition to resident personnel. It was a light, airy, and open place constructed in levels of meandering terraces where plants from hundreds of Authority worlds had been nurtured. Though every table had a clear view of the constant traffic above, foliage tended to screen one terrace from the next. The two partners had selected a table from which they could observe table 131 through a lush curtain of D’ian orchid vine freckled with sweet-smelling moss and still remain inconspicuous.

It had been their uncomplicated plan to observe who came to meet Zlarb at the table, follow them out and accost them, collecting their ten thousand by dint of whatever threats or intimidation seemed appropriate. But something was plainly wrong; no one had come.

Han began feeling uneasy despite his joking; neither he nor Chewbacca was armed. Bonadan was a highly industrialized, densely inhabited planet, one of the Authority’s foremost factory worlds. With masses of humanity and other life forms packed together in such number, the Security Police—“Espos,” as they were called in slang-talk—were at great pains to keep lethal weapons out of the hands and other manipulatory appendages of the populace. Weapons detectors and search-scan monitors were to be found almost everywhere on the planet, including thoroughfares, places of business, stores, and public transportation. And, most particularly, surveillance was maintained at each of Bonadan’s ten sprawling spaceports, the largest of which was Southeast II.

Carrying a firearm—either blaster or Wookiee bowcaster—would be grounds for immediate arrest, something the two could hardly afford. If their true identities and past activities ever came to light, the Corporate Sector Authority’s only regret would be that it could only execute them one time apiece. The one positive aspect of this situation, the way Han saw it, was that Zlarb’s contact would in all probability be unarmed as well.

Or, would have been. It was beginning to look like their wait had been for nothing.

Chewbacca punched a series of buttons on the robo-bartender and fed it some cash, very nearly their last. A panel slid back and a new round of drinks waited. The Wookiee took up a new mug enthusiastically, and for Han there was another half-bottle of a strong local wine. Chewbacca drank deeply and with obvious bliss, eyes closed, lowering the mug at last to wipe the white ring of suds out of his facial hair with the back of one paw. He closed his eyes again and smacked his lips loudly.

Han approached his bottle with less ardor. Not that he didn’t like the wine; it was the intrusive nature of this over-civilized planet, as reflected in the design of the bottle, that he abhorred. He pressed hard on the cap’s seal with his thumb and the cap popped off. Once off, it was almost impossible to re-affix. Then came the part Han really loathed; breach of the cap triggered the release of a small energy charge. Light-emitting diodes, manufactured into the bottle, began a garish show. Figures and lettering marched around the bottle extolling the virtues of its contents. The LEDs scintillated, giving what were intended to be winning statements about the wine’s contents, bouquet, and the high standards of personal hygiene embraced by the bottler’s employees and automata. Consumer information appeared, too, though in far smaller letters and less blinding hues.

Han, glaring at the bottle, refusing to touch it as long as it persisted in flaunting itself, thought
I should’ve had some of these back on Kamar. The Badlanders would probably’ve danced around them holding hands and singing hymns
.

After a minute or so the tiny charge was exhausted and the bottle reverted to an unaggressive container. Han’s attention was attracted by a conversation going on by table Number 131, only a few meters away on the next terrace down. An assistant manager, a blue-furred, four-armed native of Pho Ph’eah, was engaged in a difference of opinion with an attractive young female of Han’s own species.

The manager was waving all four arms in the air. “But the table is reserved, human! Can you not see the red courtesy light that so designates it?”

The human appeared to be several years younger than Han. She had straight black hair that fell just below the nape of her slender neck. Her skin was a rich brown, her eyes nearly black, indicating that she came from a world that received a good deal of solar radiation. She had a long, mobile face that showed, Han thought, a sense of humor. She wore an everyday working outfit—a blue one-piece bodysuit and low boots. She stood, hands gracefully on hips, and stared at the Pho Ph’eahian, unconvinced.

Then she contorted her face in a very close imitation of the manager’s, waving her arms and shrugging her shoulders in precisely the way he had, though she was a couple of arms short. Han found himself laughing aloud. She heard him, caught his eye and gave him a conspiratorial smile. Then she went back to her dispute.

“But it’s been reserved ever since I came in, hasn’t it? And nobody’s claimed it, have they? There’re no other small tables and I’m tired of sitting at the bar; I want to wait for my friends right here. Or should we take our business elsewhere? It doesn’t look like you’re making much money off this table right now, does it?”

She had hit him in a vital spot. Lost revenue was something a good Authority employee simply never permitted. The blue-furred manager looked around worriedly to make sure the party or parties for whom the table was reserved wouldn’t materialize out of thin air and object. With an eloquent four-shouldered gesture of resignation, he flicked off the red courtesy light. The young woman took her place with a look of satisfaction.

“That’s that,” Han sighed to Chewbacca, who had noticed the incident, too. “No collections today; Zlarb’s boss is as slippery as he was.”

The Wookiee grumbled like a drumroll in a deep cave. He added a surly afterword as he rose to check on the
Millennium Falcon
.

“After you check the ship,” Han called after him, “go hunt around the guild hiring halls and the portmaster’s headquarters. I’ll meet you later at the Landing Zone. See if anybody we know is in port; maybe somebody can tell us something. Chewie, if we don’t come into some cash pretty soon, we’re not even going to be able to get off Bonadan. I’m going to finish my wine, then make a few more stops to look for familiar faces.”

The Wookiee, scratching his shaggy chest, acknowledged with a basso honk. As his copilot ambled off, Han took another sip of his wine and another look around, hoping that a last-minute arrival would give him a chance to pick up the ten thousand somebody owed him. But he saw no one who looked interested in table 131. Penury loomed before him and he felt the near-undeniable craving for money to which he was especially susceptible in times of financial distress.

He whiled away a few more minutes sipping at the wine and admiring the young woman who had preempted table 131. At length she happened to turn and catch his eye again. “Happy landings,” she toasted, and he raised his glass in response to the old spacer’s greeting. She eyed him speculatively. “Long time out?”

He made an indifferent face, not sure why she was interested. “No home port for me, just a ship. It’s simpler.”

She had drained her goblet. “How about a refill?”

Her lively, amused face appealed to him, and it didn’t make much sense to carry on the conversation through intervening plant life. He took his bottle and goblet and joined her at table 131.

“You and your friend were the only other ones keeping an eye on this table,” she ventured as Han was refilling her goblet.

He stopped pouring. She reached out one forefinger and gently tilted the bottom of the bottle up, filling her goblet nearly to the brim.

“It was obvious, you know,” she went on. “Every time someone approached this table, you and your sidekick looked as if you were going to jump through the foliage. I know; I’m very good at reading expressions.”

Han was looking around for her backup men, support troops, deputies, accomplices, or whatever. Nobody else in the lounge that he could see was paying any particular attention. He had envisioned meeting a slaver’s contact, someone hard and mean enough to stomach and prosper in one of the vilest enterprises there was. This attractive, breezy female had taken him completely off guard.

She sipped the wine. “Mmm, delicious. How are things on Lur, by the way?” She was now watching him vigilantly.

He kept his face blank. “Chilly. But the air’s clearer than it is here.” He batted the air with his hand. “Not as much smoke blowing around, know what I mean?” Sounding as casual as he could, he went on. “You have something for me by the way, don’t you?”

She pursed her lips as if in deep concentration. “Since you bring it up we do have a little business. But the main lounge is a little public, wouldn’t you say?”

“I didn’t pick the place. Where would you suggest, sis, a dark alley? Down a mineshaft somewhere, maybe? Why meet here if not to take care of things?”

“Maybe I just wanted to look you over in the light.” She glanced at an overhead chrono. “But you can take it for granted that you’ve been checked out and approved. After I’ve left, wait ten minutes then follow.” She slid him a folded durasheet with stylus markings on it. “Meet me at this private hangar. Bring proof of delivery and you’ll get your money.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “You
can
read, can’t you?”

Han took the durasheet. “I’m better at feeling my way. Why all the sneaking around?”

She gave him a sour look. “You mean why didn’t I just come up to you and dump a mound of cash on the table and have you pass your receipt over? Work that out for yourself.”

She slid out of her seat and made her way out of the lounge without a backward glance. Han enjoyed the view in a dispassionate manner; she had a very nice way of moving. His first impulse was to go find Chewbacca, and perhaps even take a chance on arming himself. But if he had to hunt the Wookiee among the guild halls and portmaster’s offices, it could take the rest of the long Bonadan day. Han possessed what he regarded as a certain flair for innovation, though, as well as a confidence in his own ability to cope. None of what the woman had said rang quite true, and her allowing Chewbacca to leave before speaking to Han definitely indicated that she was angling.

Still, minutes ago he had been worrying about where his next meal was coming from, and now he had what might be a chance to get the money he felt was due him. That sort of thing always went a long way toward quieting Han Solo’s misgivings.

In any case, he had no intention of following her instructions precisely. He would cheat enough to give himself an advantage. After all, it was daylight and the spaceport was buzzing with activity.

As soon as she was out of sight, Han rose to go. On impulse he put a little more money into the robo-bartender and got himself another half-bottle, taking two more throwaway goblets from the dispenser. He told himself
If she’s on the level she might still be thirsty. I hope this makes up for grabbing her money
.